|
The punishment justly overtaking the wicked must therefore be
ascribed to the kosmic order which leads all in accordance with
the right.
But what of chastisements, poverty, illness, falling upon the
good outside of all justice? These events, we will be told, are
equally interwoven into the world order and fall under
prediction, and must consequently have a cause in the general
reason: are they therefore to be charged to past misdoing?
No: such misfortunes do not answer to reasons established in the
nature of things; they are not laid up in the master-facts of the
universe, but were merely accidental sequents: a house falls, and
anyone that chances to be underneath is killed, no matter what
sort of man he be: two objects are moving in perfect order- or
one if you like- but anything getting in the way is wounded or
trampled down. Or we may reason that the undeserved stroke can be
no evil to the sufferer in view of the beneficent interweaving of
the All or again, no doubt, that nothing is unjust that finds
justification in a past history.
We may not think of some things being fitted into a system with
others abandoned to the capricious; if things must happen by
cause, by natural sequences, under one Reason-Principle and a
single set scheme, we must admit that the minor equally with the
major is fitted into that order and pattern.
Wrong-doing from man to man is wrong in the doer and must be
imputed, but, as belonging to the established order of the
universe is not a wrong even as regards the innocent sufferer; it
is a thing that had to be, and, if the sufferer is good, the
issue is to his gain. For we cannot think that this ordered
combination proceeds without God and justice; we must take it to
be precise in the distribution of due, while, yet, the reasons of
things elude us, and to our ignorance the scheme presents matter
of censure.
|
|